31 August 2016

The Japan
Animation Today segment of the 16th Hiroshima International
Animation Festival Hiroshima 2016 features contemporary established young
animators as well as up-and-coming animators such as students.Q-rais is the nom de plume of a Tokyo-based illustrator and animator.Jérôme Boulbés is a French 3D CG animator
based in Kyoto (see: Kobutori).Musashino graduate Hiroyuki Mizumoto is a mixed media experimental animator whose
works mix live action with a variety of experimental techniques.Shunsaku Hayashi studied at Goldsmiths,
University of London on a research fellowship from the Japan Cultural
Ministry.Atsushi Makino first studied animation at UMPRUM in Prague and then
went on to hone his skills at Geidai (learn
more) where he graduated in 2011.His innovative work can be found on Vimeo.

Akie Ishii studied animation at Kyoto
Seika University.Tomoki Misato is a Musashino
graduate and is currently a student in Geidai’s graduate animation program.Director / screenwriter Makoto Nakamura made waves in 2010 when he revived the popular Soviet
animation character Cheburashka for a series of stop motion films.The character first appeared in a 1966
children’s storybook by Eduard Uspensky,
followed by a series of stop motion animations by Roman Kachanov of Soyuzmultfilm (1969-1983).The armatures for Cheburashka were designed
and built by Korean armature specialist Wuchan
Kim of Thinking Hand.Haruna
Asahi is a young animator from Okinawa who studied at Okinawa Prefectural
University of Arts in Naha.Yoshihisa Nakanishi is
a Musashino grad who makes amazing stop motion animations using complex paper
cutouts.

The
animators in this screening belong to what I call the Sōgetsu Generation.Those are animators who began making a name
for themselves as indie animators at the Sōgetsu Art Center Animation Festivals of the 1960s and
1970s.Shin’ichi Suzuki began his career in animation working at Otogi Pro for Ryūichi Yokoyama.He then
went on to co-found Studio Zero in
1963.Learn more about him in my reviews of Dot
(点/Ten,
1971) and The
Gourd Bottle (ひょうたん/Hyōtan,
1976).Suzuki is director of the Suginami Animation Museum.Keiichi Tanaami is a renowned pop
artist who has been making experimental films and animations since the early 1970s.His films use symbolism and sensual movement to
create meaning.Tatsuo Shimamura is the founder and president of Shirogumi.His film Four
Seasons of Japan (1985) won a prize at the first
Hiroshima festival in 1985.

Seiichi Hayashi is an avant-garde mangaka
most famous for his 1970 manga Red
Colored Elegy (赤色エレジー, 1970-71) which was serialized in Garo magazine and he also made it into
an animated short in 1970. Hayashi
designed this year’s festival poster.

The late Nobuhiro Aihara was one of Japan’s top
experimental animators.In addition to
his independent work, he often worked as an inbetweener and animator for major
anime studios such as Oh! Pro.Read his obituary
here, and a review of Karma (カルマ, 1977).

1. Dot (Ten,
1971), Shin’ichi Suzuki

2. The Gourd
Bottle (Hyōtan, 1976), Shin’ichi Suzuki

3. The
Laughing Spider (2016) Keiichi Tanaami

4. Four
Seasons of Japan (1985) Tatsuo Shimamura

5.
Apocalypse of Megalopolis (2009) Tatsuo Shimamura

6. Shadow (1968)
Seiichi Hayashi

7. Demon
Love Song (1971), Seiichi Hayashi

8. Red
Colored Elegy (1970), Seiichi Hayashi

9.
Yamakagashi (1971), Nobuhiro Aihara

10. Karma (1977),
Nobuhiro Aihara

11. Twilight
(1985), Nobuhiro Aihara

12. Wind (2000),
Nobuhiro Aihara

13. Memory
of Red (2004), Nobuhiro Aihara

日本アニメーション大特集11：

鈴木伸一、田名網敬一、島村達雄、林静一、相原信洋

1. 点鈴木伸一

2. ひょうたん鈴木伸一

3. 笑う蜘蛛田名網敬一

4. 花鳥風月島村達雄

5. メガロポリスの黙示録島村達雄

6. かげ林静一

7. 鬼恋歌林静一

8. 赤色エレジー林静一

9. 山かがし相原信洋

10. カルマ相原信洋

11. 逢魔が時相原信洋

12. ウィンド相原信洋

13. メモリー・オブ・レッド相原信洋

Japanese Animation Special 12:

Katsuo Takahashi, Toshio Kinoshita, Takashi
Itō

Katsuo Takahashi was a stop motion
animator famous in Japan for his 1977 film The
Wild Rose (野ばら1977).Not widely
known outside of Japan, his daughter Kariko
Takahashi carries on his legacy. Toshio Kinoshita
started out as a mangaka in the 1950s for children’s magazines and also worked
as a journalist before trying his hand at animation.He produced the opening sequence of Astro Boy and in 1965 founded Kino Pro, where he continues to act as
president.

Takashi Itō is a rather strange addition to this screening – his work
would have been more at home in Japanese
Animation Special 11 with Aihara and Tanaami, or Japanese Animation Special 16：Contemporary Directors Collection ①. He is one of
Japan’s top experimental filmmakers, with Oberhausen
2014 doing a complete retrospective of his works.Learn more about him on the Image Forum website.Read my review of his Image Forum DVD at Midnight Eye.

Toshifumi Kawahara is an award-winning CG
animation pioneer with an MA in Art and Design from UCLA.He is currently president of Polygon
Pictures.The late Tadahito Okamoto is one of Japan’s great puppet animation masters.He is famous for using different materials
and techniques in each of his films.The
Magic Ballad (おこんじょうるり, 1982) is considered one of
his greatest films.Yoichirō
Kawaguchi is a pioneering computer graphics artist and professor at the
University of Tokyo.He is an expert on “the
GROWTH model, a self-organizing
method to give form to one's rich imagination or to develop one's formative
algorithm of a complex life form. As the art or a time progression, a program generates
a form and this form is allowed to grow systematically according to a set
formula” (source). IKIF (Ishida Kifune
Image Factor) are a husband and wife animation team (Sonoko Ishidaand Tokumitsu Kifune) who have been working
together since 1979.They began making
films in 8mm, then in 16mm and by the 1980s were experimenting with CG
animation.Kifune teaches at Tokyo Zokei
while Ishida teaches at Tokyo Polytechnic.

Kōji Yamamura is one of Japan’s most internationally
acclaimed independent animators, having won the top awards at festivals around
the world from Annecy to Ottawa.His
film Mt. Head
(頭山, 2002) was nominated for an Oscar
and this year he became a member of the Academy.Franz Kafkaʼs
A Country Doctor (カフカ田舎医者, 2007) is one of his most
profound films to date.Yamamura is a
professor at Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts).Keita Kurosaka is an experimental
artist whose hand drawn animated works demonstrate a wide range of influences
from classical art to the modern grotesque. The
two films in this selection are music videos for the Japanese metal band Dir En
Grey. Kurosaka is a professor at Musashino.

1. In Search of Muscular Axis (1990), Toshifumi
Kawahara

2. Bolero (1992), Toshifumi Kawahara

3. Michael
the Dinosaur (1993), Toshifumi Kawahara

4. The Magic
Ballad (1982), Tadanari Okamoto

5. Growth: Tendril
/ Yoichirō Kawaguchi

6. Growth
Land-Growth: Mysterious Galaxy / Yoichirō Kawaguchi

7.
animandara2 (1986), IKIF

8. Troreminica
(2011), IKIF

9. Mt. Head (Atama
Yama, 2002), Kōji Yamamura

10. Franz
Kafkaʼs A Country Doctor (2007), Kōji Yamamura

11. Atama
(1994), Keita Kurosaka

12. Agitated
Screams of Maggots (2007), Keita Kurosaka

13. Rinkaku
(2012), Keita Kurosaka

日本アニメーション大特集１３：

河原敏文、岡本忠成、河口洋一郎、IKIF、山村浩二、黒坂圭太

1. 筋肉座標軸を求めて河原敏文

2. ボレロ河原敏文

3. 恐竜マイケル河原敏文

4. おこんじょうるり岡本忠成

5. グロース：テンドリル河口洋一郎

6. グロース・ランド―グロース：ミステリアス・ギャラクシー―

7. 阿耳曼荼羅（二） IKIF

8. Troreminica IKIF

9. 頭山山村浩二

10. カフカ田舎医者山村浩二

11. ATAMA 黒坂圭太

12. Agitated Screams of Maggots 黒坂圭太

13. 輪郭黒坂圭太

Japanese Animation Special 14：TV Programs

This selection
highlights episodes from early ground-breaking television animation.

1. Moleʼs
Adventure (1958), Hiroshi Washizumi

2. Astro Boy
(1963), Osamu Tezuka

3. Kimba the
White Lion (1965), Eiichi Yamamoto

4. The Star
of the Giants, Ep.83 "A Homer" (1968), Tadao Nagahama

日本アニメーション大特集１４：TV 番組

1. もぐらのアバンチュールわしずみひろし

2. 鉄腕アトム手塚治虫

3. ジャングル大帝山本暎一

4. 巨人の星第83 話『傷だらけのホームイン』長浜忠夫

**Note: films for which no image are available are represented by Lappy, the Hiroshima Animation Festival Mascot.

On Day 2 of
the 16th International Animation Festival Hiroshima 2016. the Focus
on Japanese Animation continued to explore early anime history.On Day
1, early works by anime pioneer Mitsuyo Seo were shown including examples of
the Private Norakuro series from the 1930s, Duck Brigade, and one of his best
works, Ari-chan (Learn more
here).Seo is best known for
directing the wartime propaganda films Momotarō's
Sea Eagle (Momotarō no Umiwashi,
1943) – some sources give 1942 for this film – and Momotarō's Divine Sea Warriors (Momotarō:
Umi no Shinpei, 1945).Momotarō, a
popular Japanese folk hero, was such a successful propaganda tool that films
using him and other popular folk tales were actually censored by the American
Occupation in the immediate post-war years.It is interesting to study these films alongside their American,
Canadian, British, and German counterparts, to see how this relatively new
medium of animation was used to fabricate notions of nationalism and to support
the war effort.Read review ofMomotarō's Sea Eagle (1943) to learn
more.I also recommend the Dutch
documentary Ducktators (Guus von Wavern &
Wolter Braamhorst, 1998) about animated propaganda done in Hollywood during
World War II.

This section
of films recognises early Japanese innovators in animation.The first four films are examples of early
puppet animation for educational purposes.Before Tadahito Mochinaga and
his studio MOM Pro were hired by Rankin/Bass in the 1960s to make what
have since become American stop motion TV classics (learn
more), Mochinaga had already been making animation in Japan and in China.This selection features two of his
early puppet animations The Melon
Princess and the Amanojaku (1956) and Little
Black Sambo (1956) (Read
review).Mochinaga did not make his
works alone.He had help from many
talented animators including Hiroshima 2016 Jury Selection Committee member Fumiko Magari and Yoshitsugu Tanaka, among others.

The
publisher Gakken, also got into the
animation for education scene in the 1950s.This selection features works by their two top
animator/director/producers: Kazuhiko Watanabe and Matsue Jinbo. In celebration of their 70th anniversary, Gakken has been posting their
back catalogue of innovative puppet animation on YouTube.Read the reviews ofThe Dove and the Ant (1959) and The Musicians in the Woods (1960),
to learn more.

The final
film in this screening is Fukusuke (ふくすけ, 1957) by legendary manga-ka and Otogi Pro founder Ryūichi
Yokoyama.Unlike the other films it
does not use puppet animation, but it does use stop motion using cutouts for
some of the effects.

This
selection features innovators in animation who came to prominence in the 1960s
and 1970s.Yōji Kuri is an iconoclastic artist who founded the Animation Group
of Three (アニメーション三人の会/ Animation
Sannin no Kai) with his fellow artists Ryohei
Yanagihara and Hiroshi Manabe.Learn
more about them here.Kuri has been a
regular at the Hiroshima festival since its inception.Read reviews of his films Love
(愛, 1963) and Two
Grilled Fish (二匹のサンマ, 1967).

Osamu Tezuka
is most famous as a manga-ka and for his ground-breaking anime series like Astro Boy, but he also tried his hand at
what he called jikken animation
(experimental animation).Although not
experimental in technique, they were certainly innovative in terms of narrative
and style and brought Tezuka much acclaim.Tezuka was at the first Hiroshima festival in 1985.Learn more about it here and here.

Kihachirō Kawamoto was, along with his
friend Tadanari Okamoto (who
features later in the programme), one of Japan’s great puppet animation
masters.He was at the first Hiroshima
animation festival in 1985 and was a regular guest there until his passing in
2010.Read his obituary and a review of Dōjōji Temple
(道成寺, 1976) to learn more.

1. Love (1963), Yōji Kuri

2. Au fou! (1967) Yōji Kuri

3. Two Grilled Fish (1967), Yōji Kuri

4. Tragedy on the G String (1969), Yōji Kuri

5. Mermaid (1964), Osamu Tezuka

6. Memory (1964),
Osamu Tezuka

7. Jumping (1984), Osamu Tezuka

8. Broken Down Film (1985), Osamu Tezuka

9. Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Kihachirō
Kawamoto

10. Dōjōji Temple (1976), Kihachirō Kawamoto

1. 愛 久里洋二

2. 殺人狂時代 久里洋二

3. 二匹のサンマ 久里洋二

4. G 線上の悲劇 久里洋二

5. 人魚 手塚治虫

6. めもりい 手塚治虫

7. ジャンピング 手塚治虫

8. おんぼろフィルム 手塚治虫

9. 花折り 川本喜八郎

10. 道成寺 川本喜八郎

Japanese Animation Special 9: Feature
Animation

日本アニメーション大特集９：長編

The final
event of Day 2 of the Japanese Animation Special was Ryo Saitani’s feature film
Cesium and a Tokyo Girl (2015) which
uses a mixture of live action and animation to follow central protagonist Mimi
and the seven gods in search of Mimi’s grandmother’s myna bird Hakushi.The film was made in partnership with the Laputa Art Animation School.Saitani is a long time animation fan and
critic, who became known for his work for the magazine COMIC BOX (コミックボックス).He made a
documentary about early animation innovators in Japan called Here We Go with Yoji Kuri! (2008).